Associate Director – Operational Excellence

Role Overview

• Lead the planning, execution, and delivery of enterprise initiatives and cross-functional programs from initiation through close-out.
• Define project scope, objectives, deliverables, timelines, and success metrics in alignment with organizational priorities.
• Manage project risks, dependencies, and issues, escalating as appropriate to ensure successful outcomes.
• Apply structured project and program management methodologies to ensure consistent, predictable delivery
• Support the vision of and commitment to continuous improvement in operational excellence across all activities.
• Translate enterprise and functional strategies into actionable plans and roadmaps for enterprise initiatives.
• Support execution of transformation, process improvement, and operational effectiveness programs.
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency, quality, scalability, and consistency across the organization.
• Ensure enterprise initiatives are aligned with governance requirements, quality standards, and regulatory expectations.
• Lead the evaluation of business processes and workflows to identify opportunities for improvement or automation.
• Lead stakeholders in root-cause problem-solving techniques to identify core process challenges.
• Lead the development of recommendations for process improvement, leveraging subject matter experts for critical input.
• Partner with cross functional leadership to prioritize improvement opportunities and support strategic initiatives.
• Identify, develop and execute strategies for on-going and sustained improvement in operational functions, including identification of tools, systems, staffing or other resources, procedures, and communication.
• Partner on the design and implementation of new business processes with organizational context and priorities in mind.
• Lead organizational change management to ensure adoption and sustainability of process changes.
• Lead internal communication to effectively update stakeholders on progress, performance, key issues, and blockers that may impact business attainment or critical program and project completion.
• Identify operational risks and lead implementation of mitigation plans.
• Ensure or lead the documentation of business process.
• Establish key performance metrics and dashboards for monitoring operational performance.
• Translate enterprise and functional strategies into actionable plans and roadmaps for enterprise initiatives.
• Support execution of transformation, process improvement, and operational effectiveness programs.
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency, quality, scalability, and consistency across the organization.
• Ensure enterprise initiatives are aligned with governance requirements, quality standards, and regulatory expectations.
• Oversee or lead training and guidance to teams on new processes and how to identify improvement opportunities, building awareness on continual improvement initiatives.
• Standardizes best practices and processes across the organization to ensure consistency and sustainability.
• Monitor, measure, and analyze the effectiveness of new initiatives and processes, making adjustments as needed.
• Develop and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and drive decision-making.
• Monitor adoption of process, system and organizational changes to ensure long-term and sustained adoption.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree (or its international equivalent) + 12 years of related experience
• Experience in CRO/pharmaceutical/biotechnology drug development or demonstrated competency in the key areas of the role
• Strong drug development experience with understanding of other functions relevant to the position.

Benefits

• discretionary annual bonus
• health insurance
• retirement savings benefits
• life insurance
• disability benefits
• parental leave
• paid time off for sick leave and vacation